Embedded Altruism [slides]

By Owen Cotton-Barratt @ 2025-07-01T13:02 (+21)

How should we think about doing good, when we're a part of a world which is too complex for us to fully understand?

Pragmatically, I think the answer should look less like figure out the best thing to do and then do that, and more like a combination of working out how to act well in the roles we have assumed, and strategically thinking about which areas to move into.

• Here are a few slides
• Here's a video of me talking through the slides

I'm afraid this is sort of half-baked stuff! But it's been half-baked for several years, and in the last few months I've found myself a few times linking people to my old slides, so it seemed like it could be useful to just make public, even though it's still imperfect.

I'd love to hear pushback / refinements / requests for more concrete examples, etc.